It’s Finally Happening

Well we are several days into our trip to Nappanee, IN. In fact today was the first day we visited the factory to see our new coach being built. It is on the new Ultrasteer Freightliner Chassis with the all new STAR frame by Newmar. The chassis has a tag axle that actually turns at slow speeds to help increase the turning radius in tight places such as rv parks. The STAR frame is strengthed to support the additional weight that is being put on these units, especially those with the full wall slide (fws). There are numerous other more subtle improvements to this years model, but those two are the significant ones.

We are staying in our TT at the PLA-MOR Campground in Bremen, IN about 6 miles from Newmar in Nappanee. It is a wide open place with mostly grassy sites. Ours is really level, but some are not and I think that heavy rain could cause a problem in some areas. All in all a good place and it was only $175 for 8 days with full hookups. Mosquitos and flies are an issue at dusk and dawn, but we can deal with that. Anyone who lives in GA has to be able to deal with bugs!!

Holy Cow!! Wires, wires, wires!Kitchen

We met a lot of great people today as we always seem to do. I think I’ve said before that we continue to be amazed at the friendliness of RV’ers. Of course, there are always exceptions, but we have been fortunate so far. We haven’t even encountered the weekend, heavy drinking crowd with loud music, etc. Maybe that will change. We will see over time.

Today we hooked up with Allen and Angel who we met on the iRV2 forum for Newmar owners. We are meeting another couple this weekend, Scott and Lise, who are Canadian but live part of the year in Houston. They are coming to the factory for a service appointement and we will be checking out their coach. They have a 2015 Dutch Star, which is the next model up from ours in the Newmar lineup.

Happy OwnerInside view

Tomorrow we go back at 10 am. again to do another tour and see what they have completed. They start at 6 am. so when we get in at 10 they are half way through their day. We are planning to stay through next Tueday, August 4th when they should have completed the construction, and the unit will be ready to go to the paint department. That process will take about a week as they use no decals. All the different color designs are masked off and painted with several coats of paint then clear coated and buffed. Once that is completed it will go for its final pre delivery inspection (PDI) in which all the systems will be checked. The coach should be ready for shipment sometime around the middle of September, but do to our schedule we can’t take delivery until October 12th.